Since the founding of this country, each generation has faced its own
unique set of difficulties and struggles, whether those happened to
be droughts, floods, fires, tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars,
abolition, suffrage, civil rights, economic depression, or any number
of other natural or man-made challenges. The economic, social and
environmental problems that confront us today have their own unique
character, but are actually no worse than many of those of the past.

However, there is a fundamental change that has occurred in
our society that does not bode well for our future. Where once the
majority of people understood that they must face their problems with
the will and strength of character to perform the work necessary to
overcome obstacles, this is no longer the case. Today, we now find
ourselves in a society where a sizable segment of the populace has
been trained to abdicate this responsibility and simply rely upon
government management and its financial assistance to mitigate any
hardships needing to be faces. Effectively, we now have a class of
perpetually dependent, aging adolescents who have never been required
to "grow up" and assume the mantle of responsible
adulthood. How did we arrive at this state?

The Erosion of the American Work Ethic:

America was colonized by people who understood the value of hard
work and perseverance. Traveling across the Atlantic with few
possessions, effectively cut off from European aid or assistance, the
early settlers knew that their survival depended upon their ability
to address whatever circumstances presented themselves. So important
were these characteristics, that they became codified as religious
virtues, handed down from generation to generation in what
sociologist Max Weber would later come to classify as the Protestant
work ethic. The great accomplishments and economic growth
achieved throughout the history of this country are the result of
this spirit of productiveness and personal drive exhibited by so many
people in pursuit of their dream of creating a better life for
themselves.

Another principle shaping the founding character of this country
was the virtue of independence or self-reliance, best seen embodied
in the concept of individual rights as delineated in the Declaration
of Independence. The recognition that each person was master of their
own life, with the unfettered liberty to guide themselves in a manner
of their own choosing, implied an acceptance of the responsibility
for dealing with their personal survival and happiness. In this
country, the future was in one's own control, to be principally
determined by the consequences of one's actions.

From the 17th through the early 20th centuries, the causal
relationship between the application of effort, perseverance and
self-reliance could be clearly seen resulting in a steadily
increasing prosperity, which conveyed an extremely important lesson
to each subsequent generation. In general, the American culture was
acknowledged as having an optimistic view of the future with a
"can-do" spirit, where, with hard work, anything was
possible. Opportunities were limitless, while resignation and defeat
were not treated as viable options. Still, there were counter-forces
at work destined to undermine this positive American psyche.

Of course, there was the ever-present call for self-sacrifice
which has permeated every society on earth. The philosophy of
altruism was the antithesis to the value-based culture of the United
States. Whereas individualism preached productiveness and pride in
one's achievements, altruism demanded the relinquishing of all that
was valuable, and a sense of shame in one's abilities. While the goal
of individualism was personal happiness, the end result of altruism
was the embrace of pain and suffering as noble. In practice,
Americans rejected the worst aspects of altruism, but at the same
time, lacking a proper philosophical defense against its teachings,
accepted the psychological burden of guilt for having repeatedly
failed to live up (actually down) to its anti-life requirements.

However, the greater damage to American culture began in earnest
with the inception of the welfare system. The existential roots of
welfare in the United States extend back to 1642 with the creation of
the first compulsory public school in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Here, the acquisition of an education was declared to no longer be
the responsibility or each individual, but a "right".
And at the same time, it was also dictated that these individuals no
longer retained their free choice in deciding if, when, and by what
means, they would pursue that education. Instead, authorities would
compel them to attend school at the prescribed place and time, for
the mandated duration, studying predetermined subjects and material.
In addition, other working member of society would then be forced to
bear the cost for providing this newly created "right".

And so it began. Whenever a so called "positive right"
to a good or service is introduced, it carries with it two direct
consequences: the undermining of one or more inherent natural rights
(in this case, life and liberty), and the forced enslavement of those
who are required to provide the good or service to others.
Furthermore, the creation of two opposing groups — the
providers and the consumers — leads to indirect psychological
consequences: resentment on the part of providers, and a demanding
expectation on the part of the consumers for what they have been told
is their entitlement.

The imposition of the modern welfare state began in earnest with
Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s, was
dramatically expanded by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, and has been
continually growing ever since. And assistance is no longer limited
to individuals in need, but now encompass groups, businesses and
entire industries. We are all familiar with the ubiquitous Public
Education, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, but that
only scratches the surface of the many assistance programs that our
legislators have created over time. A quick review of a few news
articles revealed the following currently active programs:

Industries

Agricultural Subsidies

Art Subsidies and Grants (NEA)

Biomass Subsidies

Education

Energy Subsidies

Export-Import Bank Loans

Fisheries Subsidies

Import/Export Controls

Manufacturing Extension
Partnerships (MEP)

Mining Subsidies

News Subsidies (NPR, PBS, PRI,
etc.)

Tariffs

Technology Subsidies Ethnic,
Religious and Trade Groups

Affirmative Action Programs

Faith-Based Services Funding

Minority Business Subsidies

Indian Casinos, Land, Resources,
etc.

Special Privileges for Ethnic
Groups

Religious Tax Exemptions

Union-Specific Legislation
Corporations
and Businesses

Bailouts (TARP, etc.)

Government Contracts

Overseas Private Investment Corp.
Loans

Publically Funded Infrastructure

Research Grants

Small Business Administration
(SBA)

Tax Abatements and Deferrals

Families and Individuals

Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC)

At-Risk Child Care

Automobile Tax Credits

Child Care and Development Fund

Child and Adult Care Food Program

Community Development Block Grants

Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

Education

Elderly Nutrition Program

Energy Investment Tax Credits

Food Stamps

Foster Care

General Assistance (General
Relief)

General Assistance Medical Care
(GAMC)

Head Start

Home Mortgage Financing

Housing Assistance for Low Income
Households

Insurance Programs (FDIC, Medical,
Catastrophe)

Interest Reduction Housing
Payments

Job Corps

Library Subsidies

Low Income Home Energy Assistance

Low Rent Public Housing (HUD)

Maternal and Child Health

Medicaid

Medicare

Pell Grants

Pensions for Needy Veterans

Rural Housing Loans and Mortgages
(USDA)

School Breakfast and Lunch

Social Security

Social Services (Title 20)

Stafford Loans

Summer Youth Employment

Supplemental Security Income

Training for Disadvantaged Youth
and Adults

Transportation Subsidies

Women, Infants & Children Food
Supplements

Workforce Investment Program (WIN)

That's sixty-six different programs or categories of aid currently
available from the federal government. Some of these you have
certainly heard of, while others may be unfamiliar. However, it turns
out that this list is incomplete and there are actually more federal
programs out there. How many would you guess?

80?
100?
150?

Early in 2010, Chris Edwards reported the following interesting
fact on the CATO
Website:

"January 22, 2010 is a day that should live in infamy,
at least among believers in limited government. On that day, the
federal government added its 2,000th subsidy program for
individuals, businesses, or state and local governments."

2,000 Assistance Programs!

This I had to see for myself. So on December 3rd I went to the
website for the Catalog of Federal
Domestic Assistance and discovered that the CATO report was
incorrect. There were now actually 2,088 program! As I was
researching this article, I returned to this site every few days, and
upon each visit discovered additional aid programs had been created
in my absence. Just between December 3rd and the 20th, six new
programs were established. for a current total of 2,094. This
means that during 2010, Obama and the Congress were creating new
programs at a rate of two per week. And how many of
these did the administration inform us of in the name of its pledge
for openness and transparency?

The Department of Health and Human Services alone administers 410
different programs while the Department of Agriculture has 226. And
the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation has not one, but four
separate programs available. Here is a breakdown of the different
categories of available aid:

Advisory Services and CounselingDirect LoanDirect
Payments for a Specified UseDirect Payments with Unrestricted
UseDissemination of Technical InformationFederal
EmploymentFormula GrantsGuaranteed/Insured
LoansGuaranteed/Insured LoansInsuranceInvestigation of
ComplaintsProject GrantsProvision of Specialized
ServicesSale, Exchange or Donation of Property or
GoodsTrainingUse of Property, Facilities or Equipment

Something free for everyone! Well, not everyone. Because,
as noted above, somebody has to actually pay for all this stuff.

Personal Welfare:

Where once people understood that it was their responsibility to
work to feed themselves, starting in 1933 the federal government
stepped in with the Civilian
Conservation Corps to create emergency make-work projects for the
unemployed. By 1935, at its peak, the CCC engaged roughly 506,000,
and after it's nine year run, a total of three million men had passed
through its ranks. Seventy-five years later, facing another economic
downturn, work is no longer actually required, as unemployment
benefits have been cemented into our culture, not as an emergency
response which you are expected to earn through hard labor, but as an
entitlement to be demanded by right. As of December 4th, the
four-week rolling average showed an active enrollment of 4,232,750
people, with Congress and the Administration negotiating to extend
these benefits, yet again, to a total of 155 weeks, or three years,
with no indication that there is any fixed end in sight.

During the 1960s, with the intent of helping people living in
poverty, numerous state and federal entitlement (welfare) programs
were instituted in response to perceived needs. Yet, after decades of
tinkering with these policies, study
after study
revealed that the long term impact on the recipients was an increase
in the creation of unlivable
slums, the further destruction of the two-parent family, elevated
teen and unwed pregnancies, a disincentive to seek out work, rising
school dropout rates, and a corresponding reduction in a child's IQ.
In addition, children of welfare recipients were shown to be much
more likely to be dependent upon these programs once becoming adults.
By 1995, the number of people on on the welfare rolls had risen to a
staggering fourteen million. And why not. After all, they're entitled
to these benefits aren't they? Today, due to subsequent program
reforms, that number on direct government assistance now hovers
around five million.

For many, an important aspect of the American Dream is the
acquisition of a house of one's own. For generations, the possibility
of home ownership has been a powerful motivator, causing individuals
and families to work hard and save diligently so that one day they
could realize their dream. The recognition that years of work and
savings were involved in order to make such a large purchase, clearly
conveyed the enormous value that a home represented. And everyone
understood this—until the federal government got involved. In
1938, as part of the New Deal, the Federal National Mortgage
Association (Fannie Mae) was established to broaden the
secondary home mortgage market by funneling federal funds into banks,
to be converted into affordable housing loans. In 1970, a
second Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)
was established by Congress for essentially the same purpose. With
the belief that everyone was entitled to the American
Dream, politicians, throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, put more and
more pressure of these two institutions, demanding that they
significantly expand the number of families able to purchase their
own homes. The result was a significant lowering in the standards
required to qualify for a mortgage, with millions of families taking
on a debt liability which they could not afford to repay, and
acquiring property, the value of which was not properly appreciated.
When the inevitable foreclosures came, these same people were
indignant at having been "cheated" out of their homes,
which they had been repeatedly told were theirs by "right".

The message is clear: Your future is insured. Should you struggle
and fail—or simply not struggle at all—the government
will step in and manage your life, providing for you not simply the
basic necessities, but the luxuries as well. Personal responsibility
and self-reliance are no longer the coin of the realm. It is your
need that matter, and we are here to take care of you, because
that is your birthright as an American. Sit back and take it easy.
You're entitled!

Corporate Welfare:

The 20th century was the heyday of private corporate research,
with businesses reinvesting a sizable percentage of their profits
back into R&D intended to yield future business innovations.
These companies often employed scientists in a variety of field,
allowing them the freedom to explore areas of pure research which
often resulted in startling discoveries leading to a large number of
Nobel Prizes. Some of the more notable corporate research facilities
included:

AT&T's
Bell Labs, which was responsible for inventing radio astronomy,
the transistor, the laser, the UNIX operating system, the C and C++
programming languages, information theory, large-scale integrated
circuits, CCD sensors, and the discovery of the cosmic microwave
background radiation.

Xerox's
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the birthing place of the
modern personal computer, including invention of the bitmapped
display, the graphical user interface (GUI), mouse, laser printing,
ethernet, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text editing,
object-oriented programming, along with the liquid crystal display
(LCD), the optical disc, IPv6 protocol and the Smalltalk programming
language.

GE's
Global Research Centers which were responsible for the vacuum
tube as well as the fluorescent and halogen lamps, the first
television broadcast, the jet engine, non-reflecting glass, silicone
chemistry, the seeding or clouds, the auto-pilot, Lexan
polycarbonate resin, artificial diamond production, solid-state
lasers, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Of course this merely scratches the surface in the history of the
innovations created through efforts of private enterprise. Yet,
despite this stellar historical track record of rapid advancement,
government has found a need to intervene, undermining the foundation
of private research through the public funding of agricultural,
scientific, technology and industrial research, either through public
universities, or by grants and other subsidies given directly to
businesses. According to a CATO
report, the direct and indirect subsidy to private businesses in
2006 was $92 billion. Today, with the TARP bailouts, stimulus bills,
pork buried in trillion dollar budgets, and the FED's inability to
keep track of $9
trillion(!), the size of the corporate welfare system is
difficult to estimate accurately. However, a few things are clear:

First, as CATO puts it, this public-private partnership
clearly breeds an "incestuous relationship" where
businesses lobby government for special favors, and government
officials extract kickbacks (also known as "campaign
contributions") in exchange for back-room promises to wield
influence on behalf of the paying business.

Secondly, government influence ultimately ends up directing
research away from promising avenues of investigation as identified
by smart, creative individuals, and towards areas which supports a
predetermined political agenda — perverting the scientific
method in the process. There are numerous examples of this, but none
so clear as the abomination concerning the public funding of climate
science research, turning it into the corrupt handmaiden of
political interests.

And third, when one business can fund its research and
development programs at the taxpayer's expense, this frees up those
previously allocated funds to be directed towards other areas,
including supporting the businesses bottom line. Competitors, still
responsible for their own development costs, are now placed at a
significant disadvantage and either learn to also feed at the public
trough, or eventually close their doors.

Public funding of research, as well as all other forms of business
subsidies, are like a cancer. Once introduced into the
free-enterprise system they slowly advance, killing the thriving
private organisms, and leaving a malignant form of corrupt Fascism in
their place.

"Learned helplessness,
as a technical term in ... human psychology, means a condition of
a human being ... in which it has learned to behave helplessly,
even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by
avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has
been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that
clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a
perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation."

"One of the most intriguing aspects is "vicarious
learning (or modelling [sic])": that people can learn
to be helpless through observing another person encountering
uncontrollable events."

This description of learned helplessness gets to the
essence of what is most damaging in all government programs of
assistance and regulation. Each time the government acts to
intervene, it sends a clear and powerful two-pronged message:

You are not responsible

You are not in control

Accepting responsibility is the essence of adulthood. Approaching
our life rationally, we gather experience and knowledge in order to
prepare ourselves for the challenges that the we may encounter. As we
acquire more skills and understanding, we gain confidence in our
abilities and take pride in our willingness to face the future,
whatever it may hold. And because of this, our life becomes an
exciting adventure to be embraced, rather than an exercise in fearful
caution. But all of this may be undermined if one believes that they
have no control over their destiny and no responsibility to choose
and guide their future course. Yet this is exactly what the
government does to so many.

While professing to help people in need, every government action
does more harm than good, by stripping the recipient of the dignity
of their adulthood and forcing them to accept the role of helpless
child. When this is repeated over and over, the message is reinforced
and the "helplessness" simply becomes the norm. Seen in
this light, it is no wonder that so many on welfare rarely
demonstrate the initiative to pull themselves out of their
impoverished conditions, when every incentive to do so has been
destroyed by the government's oh so unhelpful hand.

Fortunately, the culture of entrepreneurship still thrives in this
country, providing an outlet for those motivated by the thrill of a
challenge and the opportunity to test one's abilities to the fullest.
Start-ups and small businesses have generally flown under the
government's radar and been relatively free of its strong-arm
regulatory controls. But as a business becomes more and more
successful, it draws the government's attention and the game changes.
Where once a business leader's judgment was his or her ultimate
guide, and the responsibility for success or failure rested squarely
upon their shoulders, the encroachment of rules and regulations
imposed from the outside destroys that simple calculation. When it
begins to be more important to address the requirement of the
bureaucrats than those of the market; when pleasing some politician
rather than the customer becomes the standard of business success;
when the majority of your profits flow in from Washington D.C. with
strings attached; then you are playing a child's game of appeasement,
and no self-respecting adult would agree to submit to those terms. So
the adults are systematically driven from the ranks of big business,
leaving their operations to those of undeveloped character, lacking
independence, integrity and pride.

In this country, there have now been four generations raised under
the ever increasing presumption that the government is Big Daddy,
here to protect his children from the consequences of a complex,
unpredictable and painful world. Not everyone has succumbed to the
message, but enough have that it brings into question whether there
remains a sufficient number of people still possessing the character
required to address the difficult choices we now face. Will this
country react like the petulant children we see demonstrating and
rioting in Greece, France and Britain when faced with reality, or
will it stand tall, as a proud adult, and act to preserve its future?
We shall soon see.